full length
narrative film
featuring
Paul Lazar
William and FRED

Genre: Dramatic Comedy
Director: Helga Landauer Story by Helga Landauer
Co-written by Helga Landauer and Paul Lazar
Produced by Landauer Partners, LLC/ Cine-projects Studios
Director of Photography Michele Zarbafian
Format: B/W Digital 4K
Running time 1hour 40min
Production-Postproduction Budget 200K
Stage: completed

Fred, an actor with a floundering career, is trying to
prepare for an audition his ex-wife has arranged for him:
an unspecified part in “Hamlet” production.

Synopsis

I.

Fred struggles to relate to any characters in the play,
which he finds gravely outdated. At the same time he
has to come to terms with several other issues: selfisolation
in the apartment after his wife has left, anxiety
related to zoom audition arrangement, fear of
contracting COVID, the state of his mother in a nursing
home, and a deep sense of helplessness.

William and FRED

II.

Meanwhile the world outside erupts with
escalating social and political unrest. Fred
watches troubling television news, along
with movie adaptations of Shakespearian
play and these screen images seem to
intertwine, forming a surrealistic, parallel
narrative to his rehearsals.

III.

Fred looses track of time, his isolation
becomes self-imposed, but the events – big
and small, are piling up. He attempts to act
on them and prepare for the audition, but
the ghost of tragedy is unattainable; things
keep breaking apart and fall out of order in
Fred’s mind, in the apartment, and in the
world around its walls.

William and FRED

Setting/Scenery

The story takes place in New York City
apartment, coinciding with the COVID
lockdown, social unrest and the
US election crisis.

Leading Actor

Paul Lazar  is an American actor and theater director. He is a co-founder of the New York Big Dance Theater.

Since 1983 he has appeared in many film and television productions. Paul has acted in over 40 feature films, including Snowpiercer, The Host, Mickey Blue Eyes, Silence of the Lambs, Beloved, Lorenzo’s Oil, Mafiosi Bride , Philadelphia, Human Child, The Manchurian Candidate, Rachel’s Getting Married.

He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance Theater since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Classic Stage Company and Japan Society. The theater productions Paul directed—in the U.S. and Europe—include Young Jean Lee’s Obie Award-winning We’re Gonna Die and  Bodycast: An Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Frances McDormand for the 2014 BAM Next Wave Festival.

 

William and FRED

Characters

HAMLET
GHOST
OFELIA
GERTRUDE
CLAUDIUS
POLONIUS

MARINA, ex-wife
MEL, casting agent
Fred’s MOTHER

FRED / Paul Lazar
THERAPIST/ Anna Halberstadt
ACTING COACH/ Gordon Skinner

Director

HELGA LANDAUER, an American filmmaker, based in NYC.

Her films include BEING FAR FROM VENICE
(1998), A JOURNEY OF DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH
(2006, co-directed with Oksana Dvornichenko), A FILM
ABOUTANNAAKHMATOVA (2008), DIVERSIONS
(2009), OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN
THEYAPPEAR (2011) and ARCADIA (2015). They have
been screened at many international film festivals and
significant American and European venues, including
the Louvre and Carnegie Hall. Helga’s narrative film project “Photographers”, set in Odesa, have been endorsed by New York Foundation for the Arts, but is currently postponed due to the aggressive war against Ukraine. Helga’s current feature, “William and Fred”, which she directed and co-wrote with Paul Lazar has been filmed in New York City and completed in 2024.

William and FRED

Creative Crew

Director/ Helga Landauer

Screenplay by Paul Lazar and Helga Landauer,
on a basis of “Hamlet” by William
Shakespeare

Director of Photography – Michele
Zarbafian

Edited by Stu Segal, Michele Zarbafian, Yuri Karih,
Helga Landauer

Contacts
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